It's a first person account by a woman named Vivian Morris, who as a nineteen-year-old left college for New York City in 1940 to go live at her Aunt Peg's theater. Morris is telling her story to a woman named Angela who wrote Vivian to ask about her relationship with Angela's father, Frank. Vivian and Angela interacted first in 1971 when Vivian made her wedding dress at the request of her dear friend Frank, then in 1977 when Angela wrote to tell her Frank died, and then in 2010 when Angela wrote inquiring about the relationship, and Morris replied with the story told in the book.The close friendship between Frank and Vivian didn't come until quite late and Gilbert wrote beautiful prose of the interactions between them. In relation to Gilbert's usage of language in the book, there were some quotes that particularly stood out...
- Reference to British Army engineers during the Great War, who used to say "we can do it, whether it can be done or not."
- Vivian's Aunt Peg upon picking her up to return her back to New York City following young Vivian's abrupt and shame-filled departure... "once I like a person, I can only like them always."
- How after Vivian's business partner, close friend, and roommate Majorie gave birth and became a single mother, the two of them raised together "beautiful, difficult, tender, little Nathan," someone who Majorie spoke of by noting how hard it was to raise him, how much she loved him and how he evidence that "not everyone is meant to charge through the world carrying a spear."
- The partner of Aunt Peg, Olive, who said to Vivian after she ran away from Angela’s father Frank upon meeting him... "the field of honor is a painful field," and "an adult can make the choice to be in that field."
- Frank's words to Vivian that "the world just happens to you sometimes, and people just gotta keep moving through it, best they can."
